The General Assembly of the LEDA-Partenariat Association (LDnet) took place online on Monday 19 February 2024. It offered an opportunity to 35 participants, members and friends of LDnet, to discuss broader issues on local development and the priorities of LDnet for 2024. In the last year, LDnet has been actively involved in capacity building and […]
Webinar on Fostering Resilience in Rural Communities
Sharing experiences from an innovative training and capacity-building programme for voluntary and professional rural development practitioners. This EU-level webinar on Fostering Resilience in Rural Communities took place on Tuesday 23 January 2024. It was attended by some 160 active participants. The event was organised as part of the REBOUND project and presented key concepts and […]
Just transition and the contribution of social economy
This report is a pledge made as an answer to the call for pledges published by the European Commission as part of the transition pathway on proximity and social economy. The involves a pledge led by “Le Labo de l’ESS” in France, in partnership with “Pour la Solidarité” in Belgium, the European Network of Cities […]
Expert report: Delivering high quality CLLD in urban areas
LDnet was engaged by the European Urban Initiative (EUI) to prepare and deliver a capacity building event focused on CLLD which took place in Timisoara (Romania) in June 2023. It was organised by EUI with help from LDnet, with a team of moderators, expert in CLLD and EU urban initiatives. Community capacity building focuses on […]
How Social Enterprises can Combine Social and Economic Goals
A quarter century of experience with local community-based participatory approach in Quebec province (Canada). This initiative started about 25 years ago. In small towns, with 500 to 1000 population, there is no grocery store, no gas pump, no post office, etc. A solidarity coop, which is a multistakeholder coop, can operate a multipurpose coop, that […]
Artificial Intelligence, Collective Intelligence and Local Development
The knowledge of AI in relation to governance is at its infancy but there are signs that it could be of relevance and interest to participative approaches to local development and this makes it worth exploring it. We provide below some hints drawn from a growing pool of insights and examples of specific tools and […]
LEADER and multi-funded CLLD
The EU CAP Network has published a highlights report of its workshop on LEADER and multi-funded CLLD which was held in Ljubljana 18-19 October 2023. The workshop provided the opportunity to exchange experiences and the main challenges for the implementation of multi-funded CLLD at the Managing Authority /Paying Agency and operational level; as well as […]
The localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
LocalSDGs is one of JRC projects the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs. The LocalSDGs recognises that many of the actions needed to achieve the SDGs at the global scale have to be undertaken locally and provides support and guidance to local administrators and stakeholders for localising the Sustainable Development Goals at the […]
LEADER European Congress 2023: LEADER, the Rural Pact & rural-urban interaction
The 2023 European LEADER Congress took place in Brussels on 18 and 19 December 2023 at the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee. This Congress is the first event to bring together as many European LAGs as possible in more than 15 years. It brought together more […]
Rural toolkit launch event
The Rural toolkit is an initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) and Joint Research Centre (JRC), in collaboration with the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI). It is the first comprehensive online guide to EU funding and support opportunities for rural areas in the European Union. […]
Theories, tools and practical examples to decode rural community resilience
One-day showcase training offers insights into the REBOUND accredited course on fostering resilience in rural communities. The REBOUND project, supported by the EU through ERASMUS+ programme, developed and piloted an accredited (15 ECTS) training and capacity-building programme on rural community resilience. On the 8th of November 2023 a small group of around 15 experts, practitioners […]
Rural/urban: Laying bare the controversy
In this paper, published in Geographia Polonica, Mirek Dymitrow of the University of Gothenburg examines the “rural/urban controversy”. Abstract Concepts are the basic building blocks of all knowledge, while the strength of any societal project is dependent on the quality of those concepts. As two of the oldest geographical concepts still in widespread use, ‘rural/urban’ […]